Reaching Further Back In Time

October 20, 2007|By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON, merickson@dailypress.com 247-4783

WILLIAMSBURG — Archaeologists probing beneath the surface of a Merchants Square parking lot have discovered evidence of a rare 17th-century building that dates to a little-understood colonial outpost that preceded the town's founding in 1699.

Located under the SunTrust Bank parking lot at the corner of Prince George and Henry streets, the 40-foot-long, post-in-ground structure is one of only a handful of buildings known from the days of Middle Plantation, which was settled in 1633. It could provide important new clues about the apparently substantial but elusive rural crossroads, which has puzzled scholars for years.

"We rarely find any evidence of Middle Plantation. There are no maps that tell us how the property was laid out before the capital moved here and the town was renamed Williamsburg," Colonial Williamsburg archaeologist Mark Kostro said.

"So any discoveries of that period are entirely by chance. It's certainly the most significant feature we've uncovered in this excavation."

Like several of the other structures associated with Middle Plantation, including the Nassau Street tavern site excavated in 1999, the foundation of the newly discovered building conforms to the natural contours of the landscape.

That makes its southeast by northwest orientation conspicuously at odds with the strict east-west rectilinear grid adopted by Virginia Gov. Francis Nicholson when he laid out a plan for the new 220-acre capital in 1699, Kostro said.

The land-hugging site plan of the early building also provides a marked contrast with several later structures erected nearby during the early and mid-18th century.

Developed by prosperous contractor James Wray and his predecessor, David Minetree, the sloping property required considerable drainage improvements in order to make the new buildings comply with the town plan.

Two unusually extensive brick drains lead away from the complex of workshops and dwellings, with one surface line carrying storm water from Wray's residence and a second subterranean drain drawing ground water from the cellar of a sawyer's shop. Though neither line survives intact, Kostro estimates that each measured at least 200 feet in length and required considerable time, labor and materials to construct.

"The 17th-century structure conforms to the landscape. But in the 18th century they had an imagined plan - and it took considerable effort to make that plan fit the existing landscape," the archaeologist explained.

"The drains suggest that this area had constant problems with runoff - and they show you what the individual property owners in the 18th century had to do to make these lots suitable for building."

Funded by SunTrust Bank, which plans to erect a new building on the lot, the excavation also uncovered two previously unknown trash pits that could shed new light on the character and lifestyle of Wray's household.

Though a nearby dig in 2002 produced significant evidence regarding the nature of his extensive building trades complex - which supported the third largest household in Williamsburg - the fragments of wine bottles, ceramics, tobacco pipes and animal bones provide the first glimpse of the types of food and consumer goods that might have been found on the busy contractor's dining table.

Bits of English delftware and German salt-glazed stoneware show that Wray was a man of means as well as some social ambition. He also had a taste for wine, oysters and meat as well as Virginia tobacco.

"This leads us to believe that we're in the side yard of his dwelling - where most of the everyday household activity was taking place and the waste discarded," Kostro said.

"It's a typical domestic assemblage. We're not seeing many artifacts that indicate high status. But they are what you'd find in a well-appointed household."

The dig is scheduled to continue through the end of October, with most of the work focusing on the newly discovered 17th-century structure in the middle of the lot, Kostro said.

Interested observers can get a good view of the features from the Prince George Street sidewalk.

ONLINE EXTRA: Go to www.dailypress.com/cwdig to see a video from the Merchants Square dig.